Category: Jay Peak

2005-2006 Season, Earned Turns, Jay Peak, November

Earned Early Season Turns at Jay Peak

Veterans’ Day Weekend typically signifies the start of the season for many Northeastern Ski Areas. The big players in the game including Killington, Bretton Woods, Okemo, and Sunday River usually aspire to appease the early season masses with Holiday Weekend skiing heading into mid-November. The freaky start to the 2005-2006 Ski Season continues as an abnormally warm weather pattern settled into New England for the first half of November. A brief cold spell allowed many ski areas, including Jay Peak, to begin snow making operations for the season.

Saturday morning I awoke with many doubts that the skiing possibilities being worth the required effort. After the big October storm roared through New England, many blow downs had occurred throughout the mountains which had me considering a hike into the local Backcountry to clean up some lines. I declined the nobler pursuit in deference to pure hedonism at Jay Peak based on their snow report and snow making operations. Jay was reporting 22 inches of new snow in the past four days. Despite the natural snow having melted, the man made base was indeed about 22 inches deep, and more!

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2004-2005 Season, Earned Turns, Jay Peak, May

May Earned Turns at Jay Peak

Preparing to Hike for May Turns

Killington claimed that this past Sunday marked the end of the ski season for New England. Perhaps for lift serviced it was, but for the dedicated turn earning enthusiast, there is still much more skiing to be had this season.

It was a toss up between skinning up Killington or hiking up The Jet at Jay. With Killington twice as far away as Jay, Jay Peak seemed like the better option since this would be the last week snow would be remaining on The Jet. Got a late start leaving work at 4:30 P.M. despite planning on leaving 3:30 P.M. No worries though due to the late afternoon day light allowing for late evening turns.

Recent reports indicated that Can Am was decent and had linkable turns down to the terrain park. Warm and damp weather washed much of Can Am’s snow away. Can Am was still doable with a few brakes in the cover but given my late start and desire for continuous vertical, I opted for longest continuous vertical under the Jet triple. The Jet patch also looked rather elegant and aesthetically pleasing.

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2001-2002 Season, February, Jay Peak

Jay Peak, VT

Jay Peak is one of those New England mountains that has a dedicated and rabid following. They preach to any who will listen about how much snow and powder Jay receives and how great the glades are. If you are looking for big powder in the East and lots of Glades, then Jay Peak is definitely worth the trip! If glades and powder are not your thing, then Jay Peak doesn’t offer enough to justify the drive.

For this trip, I did not yet ski well in powder or glades. Skiers that love powder and glades must have been unhappy on the Monday I journeyed to distant Jay Peak. Jay Peak was groomed everywhere it seemed. Only a couple of choice bump trails were left alone by the groomers, much to my disappointment.

In the morning, I skied lookers right side of the mountain via the Tram and High Speed Quad. The snow was extremely fast, and the groomed snow had occasional thin cover/scrapped sections. Most trails on the right side drop into an extremely flat run out. A great place to practice a tuck for five minutes. Marked on the trail map as a blue square (perhaps because of the occasional patch of trees in the middle of the trail), this run out wore me out rather quickly. The entire bottom half of the mountain is very flat, which unfortunately makes for long flat run outs.

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